31.362, Review: Sociolinguistics: Eckert (2018)

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Subject: 31.362, Review: Sociolinguistics: Eckert (2018)

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Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2020 16:23:45
From: Ulrike Stange [stangeu at uni-mainz.de]
Subject: Meaning and Linguistic Variation

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-730.html

AUTHOR: Penelope  Eckert
TITLE: Meaning and Linguistic Variation
SUBTITLE: The Third Wave in Sociolinguistics
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Ulrike Stange, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

SUMMARY

This book is a collection of 11 papers written by Penelope Eckert. As the main
title suggests, the common denominator of all contributions is a concern with
meaning and linguistic variation. The subtitle (The Third Wave in
Sociolinguistics) is a bit misleading, as the book not only covers the “Third
Wave” in sociolinguistic studies (Part III), but also its very beginnings
(Part I) and the “Second Wave” (Part II). In fact, it is Penelope Eckert’s
academic autobiography, with the reprinted papers reflecting different stages
in her academic career (different research projects, foci and methodological
approaches). Meaning and Linguistic Variation is of potential interest to any
linguist specialising in linguistics anthropology and/or sociolinguistics. The
individual chapters are summarised below.

PART I BEGINNINGS

1 Gascon (3-14); incl. a reprint of Eckert (1983)

Eckert discusses the paradox of national language movements in relation to
French (imposed standard, supra-regional) and Occitan (regional native
language) in Occitania. The author sketches the history of French in Occitania
and the consequences for Occitan resulting from the language shift. In an
effort to undo this language shift, the Occitan Movement promotes the use and
revival of Occitan. Now, the paradox in question arises “when the needs of
unification require the submersion of authentic local or sub-regional
differences” (p. 6). This means that “standard” Occitan, “a prime symbol of
solidarity” (p. 7), becomes a vehicle in national language movements, at the
expense of regional varieties of Occitan. Eckert list three steps that are
necessary to replace French in the public domain (1. introduction of standard
Occitan, 2. introduction of standard Occitan orthography, 3. expansion of
Occitan vocabulary) and highlights the fact that national language movements
affect central and peripheral areas in different ways: “people on the
periphery of regions have always known that they are linguistically and
culturally subordinate” to the centre and central varieties (p. 12). As a
result of the Occitan Movement, history repeats itself, only that the norm now
is standard Occitan, which is superior to regional varieties of this language.

2 Stigma in Meaning and Language Shift (15-27); incl. a reprint of Eckert
(1980a)

In the second paper, the author addresses the issue of high vs. low status of
the varieties in diglossic areas, drawing on French and Gascon. Diglossia
means that two varieties co-exist, and one variety is usually perceived as
superior and more formal than the other, which is “low” and often reserved for
informal contexts. In a way, as a result of this linguistic division of labour
speakers do not really have a choice which variety to use in a given context.
Eckert states that diglossia could be seen as constituting “a democratic
arrangement […] as it allows the vernacular to co-exist with the high
language” (p. 17). With respect to the linguistic division of labour, an
alternative definition of diglossia is that each language is assigned “to its
own set of events” (p. 21, cf. Hymes 1972). Language shift thus involves
taking over more and more speech events. Eckert provides examples for these
encroachments and discusses the consequences this has for the “low” language.
In short, the “high” language steadily gains prestige and is used in an
increasingly wider range of contexts, while the “low” language is used in even
fewer contexts and becomes more and more stigmatised. This process is
reflected in the  general trend of upward social mobility that is accompanied
by an increase in the use of the standard (associated with money and success)
and, concomitantly, the loss of the vernacular. In allusion to the title
“Diglossia: Separate and Unequal”, Eckert states in her conclusion that
equality between the two languages can only be achieved if they are used for
the same speech events.

PART II MY PARTICIPATION IN THE SECOND WAVE

3 Jocks and Burnouts (31-39); incl. a reprint of Eckert (1980b)

The third paper investigates the semiotics of clothing at an American high
school. At Belten High, three major student groups are distinguished, with two
groups representing the extreme ends of a continuum. The so-called “Jocks” are
the upper-class(-ish) students that participate in school activities, while
the “Burnouts” are those students that feel left out/behind or generally out
of place at the school and that refrain from engaging in school activities.
These are typically lower class(-ish). The third group are the
“In-Betweeners”, who are in every sense in between the Jocks and the Burnouts.
Eckert studied jeans width as a marker of category membership because Jocks
tend to buy and wear the latest fashion (which was straight-legged at the
time), whereas Burnouts tend to wear wide bells. In her study, Eckert relied
on coding for jeans width (bottom of leg vs. knee) as usually more than half
the students wore jeans. She mapped the average scores for jeans width onto
the different places within the school at lunchtime and during class
(cafeteria, courtyard, halls). Eckert found that jeans width served as an
indicator of where the different territories were at school: areas with high
scores for jeans width were populated by Burnouts and located at the periphery
(furthest from the school building), while Jocks mainly spent their time in
the cafeteria or close to it (areas with the lowest scores for jeans width).
In-Betweeners were found between these two larger areas, and their average
jeans width was between that of Jocks and Burnouts. 

4 Jocks, Burnouts and Sound Change (40-65); incl. a reprint of Eckert (1988)

The fourth paper deals with social dynamics and sound change. Phonological
changes typically originate in and spread from urban areas, and innovative
forms are often associated with the working-class and younger speakers in a
given community. Eckert argues that variation patterns in “children’s and
preadolescents’ social and linguistic identity are largely determined by
family and residence” (p. 43), and that this might change in adolescent
because the social settings change. As a result, if there is a conflict
between the parents’ socioeconomic class and the adolescent identity, the
adolescent will opt in their speech pattern for the desired identity. In
short, in adolescence the issue is whether to accept adult authority or not.
This issue becomes apparent in public secondary schools, where we typically
have two extreme groups of students, as exemplified by the Jocks (acceptance
of adult authority) and the Burnouts (rejection of adult authority). These
differences in attitude towards adult/school authority are reflected in the
social networks these two groups engage in: Jocks just spend time with people
attending the same school, and their friends change as their activities
change. Burnouts, on the other hand, have a more heterogeneous social network
(based on the friends they have in their neighbourhood) that is still active
after graduation (because it is not purely based on the school, as it is for
the Jocks). With respect to sound change, Eckert hypothesises that variation
will be more pronounced in the speech of those that reject the authority that
the standard pronunciation is attached with. In this way, innovative forms
signal distance from what (or rather who) is “undesirable”. In her study, the
parent’s socioeconomic class had no significant effect where the lowering and
backing of (uh) is concerned, but the social category membership served as a
reliable predictor for the occurrence of this sound change, with the Burnouts
as the most innovative speakers. Also, since Burnouts have more contact with
speakers from urban areas (because they are more mobile in that respect than
Jocks), they have greater motivation to incorporate urban speech features into
their own speech. Importantly, as a given sound change spreads it loses its
association with the particular kind of people who promoted its use in the
first place and thus becomes more acceptable to a wider range of speakers.    
 

5 The Local and the Extra-Local (66-79); incl. a reprint of Eckert (2004)

This paper addresses the question of how change spreads regionally. Although
people living in a given area have the sense of living in the same “place”,
there are differences as regards where boundaries are perceived and how they
participate in this community. These differences are in turn reflected in
linguistic practices and linguistic variation. In her study, Eckert shows “how
the ‘outsides’ are articulated with the ‘insides’ of communities and how
language […] brings the ‘outside’ in and the ‘inside’ out” (p. 70). She
focuses on regional boundaries in the Detroit conurbation, again drawing on
the Jocks and the Burnouts. She notices that this Jock-Burnout continuum
varies from school to school so that Jocks from one school could be perceived
as Burnouts in another school and vice versa. Still, within each school, the
Jocks lag behind the Burnouts in the use of innovative forms. She concludes
from her findings that “the key to social meaning in variation […] is not to
be found in oppositions within the community […] or in oppositions among
communities […] but in the merger of the two” (p. 77).    

6 On the Outs (80-108); incl. a reprint of Eckert (1989)

This paper is concerned with the roles of sex and gender in language variation
and change. While sex is biologically determined, gender is a social
construct, and the two cannot be equated. Importantly, as Eckert notes,
“researchers […] tend to fall back on unanalyzed notions about gender to
interpret whatever sex correlations emerge in the data and not to consider
gender where there are no sex correlations” (p. 87). She calls into question
the common notion that there is a “simple, constant relation between gender
and variation” (p. 88). Indeed, various studies have shown that both men and
women are found to lead language change, depending on the variable
investigated. Differences in the use of sound change are often accounted for
by differences in class orientation, with female speakers typically orienting
themselves towards (overt and conservative) prestige norms to counterbalance
their powerlessness. In a way, they use linguistic strategies to gain upward
mobility. Eckert maintains that power has more explanatory power than prestige
when analysing gender-based linguistic variation. In her argumentation she
draws on Labov (1984) and Guy et al. (1986). In both studies, the female lead
was caused by lower working-class men deviating from a linear pattern (the
higher the “class” the more conservative), and Eckert argues that “it is
problematic to seek the explanation of [the men’s] behaviour in simple
differentiation from the ‘opposite’ sex group” (p. 93). Therefore,
“differentiation on the basis of gender might well be sought within, rather
than between, sex groups” (p. 95). She continues to sketch power in relation
to gender and opportunities for upward mobility. Women in general are limited
to the accumulation of symbolic capital rather than achievements or material
wealth to define their status, and, importantly, “[g]ender differentiation is
greatest in those segments of society where power is scarcest” (p. 98). Eckert
discusses phonological variation (wrt the Northern Cities Chain Shift) in
Jocks and Burnouts and shows that the girls lead over the boys, and the
Burnouts over the Jocks. Her results show that gender plays a role for most
changes but correlates only partially, and that the role gender plays is not
identical across the changes considered. She concludes that “sex and social
category are not necessarily independent variables but […] can interact in a
very significant way” and that “girls are asserting their category identities
through language more than are the boys” (p. 106).     

7 Foregrounding Style (109-122); incl. a reprint of Eckert (1996)

The next paper examines the development of a cohort of adolescents in grades
five and six, both with respect to their linguistic behaviour and their
behaviour in general. Eckert sketches the change this cohort undergoes from
being asexual to being normatively heterosexual, and the consequences this has
for the individuals in this cohort, including the development of a “popular
crowd” (p. 117). She focuses specifically on the girls and explains the
mechanism underlying their creation of a “highly meaningful local style” (p.
117), with style defined as “a clustering of linguistic resources that has
social meaning” (p. 118). Eckert zooms in on a girl called Trudy and describes
the stylistic changes she goes through in preadolescence, particularly
linguistic changes and changes in behaviour (hugging, greetings, etc.) and
social group she hangs out with.   

PART III THE THIRD WAVE

8 The SLIC Generation (125-142); incl. reprints of Eckert (2002, 2003)

This paper focuses on the social nature of desire, which is often
conceptualised as “an individual, private, thing” (p. 127), whereas sexuality
is often viewed as a social phenomenon simply because of the activity that is
usually involved. The first section is concerned with personae and category
identities and highlights the fact that there is no such thing as gay speech
but rather that certain linguistic markers that are available to everyone are
used to create a style associated with the gay communities (category
identity). Eckert goes on to explore the notion of (un)desire and the roles
that sounds related to sexuality and desire play in linguistics and in life.
It is because of their naturalness and their relation to emotions that
sexuality and desire are challenging to investigate. The author presents a
study on adolescents and argues that “heterosexual practice structures the
emergence of the peer-dominated social order that separates adolescence from
childhood” but that this process is “anything but sexual” (p. 133). Rather, it
is about social desire and the role one wishes to play in a group (“an
innocent, a slut or a stud”, p. 134). In a similar vein, the loss of virginity
might just function to prove a point as opposed to having to do with tender
feelings and romance. Thus, “sexuality is not just about sex” (p. 135), but
sexuality is about desire, and the object of desire comes in various forms
(e.g., recognition in a social setting).    

In the second part of this paper, Eckert addresses the issue of the “Authentic
Speaker”, who is, after all, a mere construct. Models of language variation
often fail to examine the relation between automatic and intentional
variation, and the authentic speaker is traditionally “[l]ocally located and
oriented” (p. 137) and produces authentic output. Eckert calls into question
this notion of authenticity, as this implies that speakers showing variation
in their speech because they are “pushing the envelope” (p. 137) are
unauthentic or less authentic. Also, it is quite possible that changes differ
in nature: there might be changes that require repeated exposure in social
interaction and there might also be changes that do not. In conclusion, it is
time to voice second thoughts about the notion of the authentic speaker and to
reconsider relevant fields of research by expanding the scope from the
individual and their linguistic behaviour to the world around them.

9 The Nature of Indexicality in Variation (143-164); incl. a reprint of Eckert
(2008)

In this paper, Eckert makes a claim for the continued importance of linguistic
anthropology, despite its being ousted by sociolinguistics. Drawing on the
notion of indexical order, she argues that “the meanings of variables […]
constitute a field of potential meanings – […] any one of which can be
activated in the situated use of the variable” (p. 144). She critically
discusses the neglect of meaning where generalisation is concerned. The
numbers for a given sound change suggest correlations with, say, gender or
working-class, but there is no attempt to account for the meaning associated
with particularities in use and for the patterns underlying these
generalisations. While style is generally thought of as different ways of
saying the same thing, Eckert argues that “[d]ifferent ways of saying things
are intended to signal different ways of being, which includes different
potential things to say” (p. 146). In stylistic practice, then, speakers draw
on various resources (e.g., variables pertaining to language, clothes,
habitus, etc.) to both construct and interpret style. The author discusses the
findings of a study on white adolescent speech in Belten High (Detroit area)
where she found that the use of the linguistic variants she investigated was
associated with different communities of practice (Jocks vs. Burnouts, boys
vs. girls). More precisely, the Burnouts were found to lead in the use of
urban variants, which was in line with their rejecting the local/school
identity. Within the Burnouts group, the girls led the boys in the use of all
variables considered. Eckert claims that acts of identity “are systematically
related to the macrosociologist’s categories and embedded in the practices
that produce and reproduce them” (p. 153). She defines the indexical field as
“a constellation of meanings that are ideologically linked” (p. 154).
Importantly, these meanings or indexical values are in flux so that they may
undergo changes in meaning and values. In her conclusion, Eckert stresses that
variation theory “ultimately must deal with meaning” (p. 163), as meaning is
essential in the construction of style. 

10 What Kinds of Signs Are These? (165-185); incl. a reprint of Eckert (2008)

The next paper addresses the multi-layered nature of construal, viz. variables
can index several qualities (ethnicity, socio-economic status, education,
etc.) simultaneously. The main point of the paper is that “speakers of
so-called ethnolects do not live or speak in isolation” and that the existence
of any given ethnolect is down to “a fairly restricted set of resources” (p.
167).  Moreover, the question is whether a variable indexes categories
directly or indirectly, as this has important implications for the analysis of
variation patterns. Eckert discusses the example of Chicano and Anglo English
in California, both of which can be viewed as ethnolects. Her case study
concentrates on two students (Chicano and white), and Eckert outlines the
different worldly aspects that play a role in the construction of Chicano or
white identities in California. The Northern California Vowel Shift is used to
illustrate differences in use in the two ethnolects considered. Her findings
suggest that it is crowd participation rather than ethnicity that accounts for
the observed patterns, and she points out that an understanding of how
speakers perform acts of identity in situations where ethnicity “plays a
prominent but not determining role” (p. 185) could reveal important subtleties
where indexicality is concerned. 

11 The Semiotic Landscape (186-192)

The final paper discusses the notion of the semiotic landscape and highlights
that it “allows us 
to see meaning arrayed in the world” (p. 188). Eckert briefly delves into
language acquisition and the role it plays in language variation and change
and concludes the book with suggestions for further research and for
rethinking established methodological and conceptual approaches. 

EVALUATION

The individual papers are woven together so that the book as a whole is a
coherent read. Eckert provides transitions between the individual parts and
the individual papers, rich with personal details. Every single contribution
has a separate introduction and a brief conclusion. Parts of the book are
redundant (especially information regarding the Jocks and the Burnouts) but
this is owed due to the format of this work and the high number of reprints of
already published papers. This book is intended to be an “intellectual
autobiography” (p. xi) and there is no doubt that this has been accomplished.
The individual parts of the book reflect the different stages in Eckert’s
career as a linguist, and within each part the sequence of papers makes
perfect sense (although not always in chronological order). 

Given the nature of the book I would say readers who want to have a
comprehensive overview of Eckert’s work would be quite happy to read it. I do
not think I would use it in teaching as all works are written by a single
author, thus limiting the scope considerably. Rather, I would pick individual
papers of interest and work with those. Some of the papers deal with varieties
in France, and while the overall concept might be transferable to other
countries where we have diglossic situations, they are still quite specific in
their focus. Another point of concern is the huge proportion of (linguistic)
anthropology that is apparent in Eckert’s work (sometimes I was wondering
whether I was still reading a book on linguistics). Undoubtedly, it is
interesting to read about the social workings in adolescence and about how
jeans leg width expresses rebellion, but this is no content that I would have
expected in a book entitled Meaning and Linguistic Variation. In the final
section of her book, Eckert discusses “where to go from here” and draws
attention to the underlying complexity of the concepts commonly used in
sociolinguistics and that we should take less for granted and try to detect
more meaning in the patterns we observe in our studies. 

I think this is a good book, but the prospective reader should be aware that
the title was not well chosen. It is not predominantly about the Third Wave in
Sociolinguistics, and it is definitely not purely (socio)linguistic. 

REFERENCES

The following papers were reprinted in Eckert (2018):

Arnold, Jennifer, Renee Blake, Penelope Eckert, Melissa Iwai, Norma
Mendoza-Denton, Carol Morgan, Livia Polanyi, Julia Solomon and Tom Veatch.
1993. Variation and personal/group style. Paper presented at NWAVE-22. Ottawa:
University of Ottawa.

Eckert, Penelope. 1980a. Diglossia: separate and unequal. Linguistics 18.
1053-64

Eckert, Penelope. 1980b. Clothing and geography in a suburban high school. In:
Conrad P. Kottak (ed.) Researching American culture, 45-48. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press. 

Eckert, Penelope. 1983. The paradox of national language movements. Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural Development 4. 289-300.

Eckert, Penelope. 1988. Sound change and adolescent social structure. Language
in Society 17. 183-207.

Eckert, Penelope. 1989. The whole woman: sex and gender differences in
variation. Language Variation and Change 1. 245-267.

Eckert, Penelope. 1996. Vowels and nailpolish: the emergence of linguistic
style in the preadolescent heterosexual marketplace. In: Natasha Warner,
Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela Bilmes, Monica Oliver, Suzanne Wertheim and Melinda Chen
(eds.) Gender and belief systems, 183-190. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and
Language Group.

Eckert, Penelope. 2002. Demystifying sexuality and desire. In: Kathrin
Campbell-Kimbler, Robert Podesva, Sarah Roberts and Andrew Wong (eds.)
Language and sexuality: contesting meaning in theory and practice, 99-110.
CSLI Publications.

Eckert, Penelope.  2003. Elephants in the room. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7.
392-397. 

Eckert, Penelope. 2004. Variation and a sense of place. In: Carmen Fought
(ed.) Sociolinguistic variation: critical reflections, 107-120. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field.  Journal of
Sociolinguistics 12. 53-476.

Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Where do ethnolects stop? International Journal of
Bilingualism 12. 25-42.

Other References:

Hymes, Dell. 1972.  Models of the interaction of language and social life. In:
John Gumperz and Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: the
ethnography of communication, 35-71. New York: Holt, Rinehart& Winston.

Labov, William. 1984. The intersection of sex and social factors in the course
of language change. Paper presented at NWAV 13, University of Pennsylvania. 

Zhang, Qing. 2001. Changing economics, changing markets: a sociolinguistic
study of Chinese yuppies. PhD thesis, Stanford University.

Zhan, Qing. 2005. A Chinese yuppie in Beijing: phonological variation and the
construction of a new professional identity. Language in Society 34. 341-366. 

Zhan, Qing. 2008. Rhotacization and the “Beijing Smooth Operator”: the social
meaning of a linguistic variable. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12. 201-222.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Ulrike Stange is a research assistant at the JGU in Mainz, Germany, where she
instructs prospective teachers of English as a foreign language in the
intricacies of English. Her research interests are sparked by encounters with
“oddities” in the English language, such as the use of pseudo-passives in
British English and innovative uses of the intensifier so. She is the author
of Emotive Interjections in British English (Benjamins, 2016) and holds a
Ph.D. in English Linguistics from the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz,
Germany.





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